Döhle & Costamare JV ‘Blue Net Chartering’ Operational

Döhle & Costamare JV ‘Blue Net Chartering’ Operational

The Greek- German joint venture between Peter Döhle and Costamare, which was agreed last year, officially went into operation on Thursday. A spokesperson for Peter Döhle confirmed that the joint venture ‘Blue Net Chartering’ headquartered at Hamburg has been completed.

Blue Net Chartering will exclusively serve the container ship fleets operated by Peter Döhle and Costamare and also third-party vessels. It is currently a total of 220 units with parking capacities totaling 1.1 million TEU, says Döhle. The focus is on medium and very large vessels up to 14,000 TEU.

This means that the joint venture should be the largest commercial manager of tramp container ships in the world in terms of space fleet capacity – even ahead of Hanseatic Unity Chartering, the joint chartering organisation of the shipping companies Asiatic / Atlantic Lloyd, Borealis Maritime, Leonhardt & Blumberg, North shipping company and Bernhard Schulte. The goal is to ensure bundled forces best possible occupations for the ships, said the Döhle spokesman.

The merger of Döhle and Costamare’s container shipment is another milestone in the consolidation of the tramp-shipowner side – apparently in response to the merger and acquisition wave among liner shipping companies chartering ships from them.

Peter Döhle had already outsourced the chartering of all smaller feeder ships to another joint venture in 2013: Ernst Russ Shipbroker. The company has since bundled the marketing of the fleets, which were previously cared for separately by Döhle, Stüwe & Co. and Ernst Russ. However, the ownership and commercial administration of the tramp vessels remains with the previous owners.

The management of Blue Net Chartering consists of Niclas Ahrens (Corporate Development, Peter Döhle Schiffahrts KG) and the former Chartering Manager of the shipping company Hamburg Süd, Sebastian Diedrich. The latter was recruited for Blue Net at the end of last year.